Wit E-Book

Margaret Edson

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: NHB Modern Plays
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 75

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

A striking and sharply funny reflection on the frailty of existence and the complex relationship between knowledge and love. Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Vivian Bearing, Ph.D., a renowned specialist in the brilliantly difficult Holy Sonnets of John Donne, has been diagnosed with stage four metastatic ovarian cancer. Her approach to her illness is not unlike her approach to Donne: aggressively probing and intensely rational. But during the course of her illness – and her stint as a prize patient in an experimental chemotherapy programme – she comes to reassess her life and her work with profundity and an unbearably moving wry humour. Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit was first performed in 1995. It was filmed for TV by Mike Nichols in 2001, starring Emma Thompson (who also wrote the screenplay).

Leseprobe

Margaret Edson

WIT

LONDON

NICK HERN BOOKS

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Wit was first performed at the South Coast Repertory Theater in Costa Mesa, California, on 24 January 1995. It was produced by South Coast Repertory, David Emmes, producing artistic director, and Martin Benson, artistic director. The production was directed by Martin Benson. The set was designed by Cliff Faulkner; the costume design was by Kay Peebles; the lighting design was by Paulie Jenkins; the music and sound design were by Michael Roth. The production manager was Michael Mora. The stage manager was Randall K. Lum. The cast was as follows:

VIVIAN BEARING, PH.D.

Megan Cole

HARVEY KELEKIAN, M.D./MR BEARING.

Richard Doyle

JASON POSNER, M.D.

Brian Drillinger

SUSIE MONAHAN, R.N., B.S.N.

Mary Kay Wulf

E. M. ASHFORD, D.PHIL.

Patricia Fraser

LAB TECHNICIANS/STUDENTS/RESIDENTS.

Christopher Du Val, Kyle Jones, Stacy L. Porter

This text is based on the production of Wit that opened at the Union Square Theatre, New York City, on 7 January 1999. It was produced by MCC Theater, Long Wharf Theatre, and Daryl Roth, with Stanley Shopkorn, Robert G. Bartner, and Stanley Kaufelt; associate producer, Lorie Cowen Levy. General management by Roy Gabay. The production was directed by Derek Anson Jones. The set was designed by Myung Hee Cho; the costume design was by Ilona Somogyi; the lighting design was by Michael Chybowski; the music and sound design were by David Van Tieghem; the wigs were by Paul Huntley. The production manager was Kai Brothers. The production stage manager was Katherine Lee Boyer. The casting was by Bernard Telsey Casting. The cast was as follows:

VIVIAN BEARING, PH.D.

Kathleen Chalfant

HARVEY KELEKIAN, M.D./MR BEARING.

Walter Charles

JASON POSNER, M.D.

Alec Phoenix

SUSIE MONAHAN, R.N., B.S.N.

Paula Pizzi

E. M. ASHFORD, D.PHIL.

Helen Stenborg

LAB TECHNICIANS/STUDENTS/RESIDENTS.

Brian J. Carter, Daniel Sarnelli, Alli Steinberg, Lisa Tharps

The production opened originally at the Long Wharf Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, on 31 October 1997. Doug Hughes, artistic director; Michael Ross, managing director.

It opened in New York at MCC Theater, 17 September 1998. Robert LuPone and Bernard Telsey, executive directors; William Cantler, associate director.

Wit opened at the Vaudeville Theatre, London, on 3 April 2000, with Kathleen Chalfant as Vivian Bearing, directed by Leigh Silverman (recreating the original New York production).

Contents

Title Page

Original Production

Notes

Characters

Wit

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Notes

Most of the action, but not all, takes place in a room of the University Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Centre. The stage is empty, and furniture is rolled on and off by the technicians.

Jason and Kelekian wear lab coats, but each has a different shirt and tie every time he enters. Susie wears white jeans, white sneakers, and a different blouse each entrance.

Scenes are indicated by a three-line space in the script; there is no break in the action between scenes, but there might be a change in lighting. There is no intermission.

Vivian has a central-venous-access catheter over her left breast, so the IV tubing goes there, not into her arm. The IV pole, with a Port-a-Pump attached, rolls easily on wheels. Every time the IV pole reappears, it has a different configuration of bottles.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the cast that read the first draft of Wit in July 1991: Joyce Edson, Derek Anson Jones, Michael Edson, Leslie Spitz-Edson, and Calvin Gidney. Thanks to Mary and Steve Ales and the late Ruth Mortimer for reading the next draft. Thanks to Jerry Patch, Martin Benson, and my friends at South Coast Repertory. Thanks to Doug Hughes and my friends at Long Wharf Theatre, and Bernard Telsey and my friends at MCC. Thanks to Carolyn French and my friends at the Fifi Oscard Agency. Thanks to Linda Merrill for hearing every word.

Characters

VIVIAN BEARING, PH.D.50; professor of seventeenth-century poetry at the university

HARVEY KELEKIAN, M.D.50; chief of medical oncology, University Hospital

JASON POSNER, M.D.28; clinical fellow, Medical Oncology Branch

SUSIE MONAHAN, R.N., B.S.N.28; primary nurse, Cancer Inpatient Unit

E. M. ASHFORD, D.PHIL.80; professor emerita of English literature

MR BEARINGVivian’s father

LAB TECHNICIANS CLINICAL FELLOWS STUDENTS CODE TEAM

The play may be performed with a cast of nine: the four TECHNICIANS, FELLOWS, STUDENTS, and CODE TEAM MEMBERS should double; DR KELEKIAN and MR BEARING should double.

VIVIAN BEARING walks on the empty stage pushing her IV pole. She is fifty, tall and very thin, barefoot, and completely bald. She wears two hospital gowns – one tied in the front and one tied in the back – a baseball cap, and a hospital ID bracelet. The house lights are at half strength. VIVIAN looks out at the audience, sizing them up.

VIVIAN (in false familiarity, waving and nodding to the audience). Hi. How are you feeling today? Great. That’s just great. (In her own professorial tone.) This is not my standard greeting, I assure you.

I tend toward something a little more formal, a little less inquisitive, such as, say, ‘Hello.’

But it is the standard greeting here.

There is some debate as to the correct response to this salutation. Should one reply ‘I feel good,’ using ‘feel’ as a copulative to link the subject, ‘I,’ to its subjective complement, ‘good’; or ‘I feel well,’ modifying with an adverb the subject’s state of being?

I don’t know. I am a professor of seventeenth-century poetry, specialising in the Holy Sonnets of John Donne.

So I just say, ‘Fine.’

Of course it is not very often that I do feel fine.

I have been asked ‘How are you feeling today?’ while I was throwing up into a plastic washbasin. I have been asked as I was emerging from a four-hour operation with a tube in every orifice, ‘How are you feeling today?’

I am waiting for the moment when someone asks me this question and I am dead.

I’m a little sorry I’ll miss that.

It is unfortunate that this remarkable line of inquiry has come to me so late in my career. I could have exploited its feigned solicitude to great advantage: as I was distributing the final examination to the graduate course in seventeenth-century textual criticism – ‘Hi. How are you feeling today?’

Of course I would not be wearing this costume at the time, so the question’s ironic significance would not be fully apparent.

As I trust it is now.

Irony is a literary device that will necessarily be deployed to great effect.

I ardently wish this were not so. I would prefer that a play about me be cast in the mythic-heroic-pastoral mode; but the facts, most notably stage-four metastatic ovarian cancer, conspire against that. The Faerie Queene this is not.

And I was dismayed to discover that the play would contain elements of . . . humour.

I have been, at best, an unwitting accomplice. (She pauses.) It is not my intention to give away the plot; but I think I die at the end.

They’ve given me less than two hours.

If I were poetically inclined, I might employ a threadbare metaphor – the sands of time slipping through the hourglass, the two-hour glass.

Now our sands are almost run; More a little, and then dumb.

Shakespeare. I trust the name is familiar.

At the moment, however, I am disinclined to poetry.

I’ve got less than two hours. Then: curtain.

She disconnects herself from the IV pole and shoves it to a crossing TECHNICIAN. The house lights go out.

VIVIAN. I’ll never forget the time I found out I had cancer.

DR HARVEY KELEKIAN enters at a big desk piled high with papers.

KELEKIAN. You have cancer.

VIVIAN (to audience). See? Unforgettable. It was something of a shock. I had to sit down. (She plops down.)

KELEKIAN. Please sit down. Miss Bearing, you have advanced metastatic ovarian cancer.

VIVIAN. Go on.

KELEKIAN. You are a professor, Miss Bearing.

VIVIAN. Like yourself, Dr Kelekian.

KELEKIAN. Well, yes. Now then. You present with a growth that, unfortunately, went undetected in stages one, two, and three. Now it is an insidious adenocarcinoma, which has spread from the primary adnexal mass –

VIVIAN. ‘Insidious’?

KELEKIAN. ‘Insidious’ means undetectable at an –

VIVIAN. ‘lnsidious’ means treacherous.

KELEKIAN. Shall I continue?

VIVIAN. By all means.

KELEKIAN. Good. In invasive epithelial carcinoma, the most effective treatment modality is a chemotherapeutic agent. We are developing an experimental combination of drugs designed for primary-site ovarian, with a target specificity of stage three-and-–beyond administration.

VIVIAN: Insidious. Hmm. Curious word choice. Cancer. Cancel.

‘By cancer nature’s changing course untrimmed.’ No – that’s not it.

Am I going too fast?

(To KELEKIAN.) No.

Good.

You will be hospitalised as an in-patient for treatment each cycle. You will be on complete intake-and-output measurement for three days after each treatment to monitor kidney function. After the initial eight cycles, you will have another battery of tests.

Must read something about cancer.

Must get some books, articles. Assemble a bibliography.

Is anyone doing research on cancer?

Concentrate.

The antineoplastic will inevitably affect some healthy cells, including those lining the gastrointestinal tract from the lips to the anus, and the hair follicles. We will of course be relying on your resolve to withstand some of the more pernicious side effects.

Antineoplastic, Anti: against. Neo: new. Plastic. To mould. Shap ing. Antineoplastic. Against new shaping.

Hair follicles. My resolve.